All posts tagged ‘Tory Belleci’

When it comes to sport, there’s no explaining what some find entertaining. Whether your passion is chess boxing, bull poker or extreme ironing, there seems to be cult followings for each. And, as it turns out, there’s quite the an interest in anvil firing, a centuries old pursuit where an anvil is blasted up to to 500 feet in the air by nothing more than black powder and a spark.

If this sounds like a crazy and side-splitting good time, you’re right, but you’re not alone in your thinking. The Science channel, will be airing a sports special Monday night that showcases the 2011 U.S. Anvil Shooting Championship. The show, which is hosted by Tory Belleci from Mythbusters, is a raucous good time and well worth checking out if you enjoy things that go boom. I sat down to interview Tory and to laugh about this crazy sport, talk about the danger of anvil firing, and amaze at the sheer ridiculousness of blowing an anvil sky high.

Tory Belleci: Exactly! (laughing) What the hell is Flying Anvils? Basically, they take a 100 lb. anvil and they put it on the ground, level it and make sure it’s totally stable. They have a pocket that’s drilled out on the top and they fill it up with one pound of black powder and then they put another 100 lb. anvil on top of that and then they light a fuse and stick it into that pocket and when the black powder explodes, it launches this anvil up to 200 feet in the air. It’s so hillbilly, it’s not even funny.

This is serious redneck stuff. It’s a sport and they have competitions and these guys have been shooting anvils for about 200 years. Basically, for this sport, the way they judge it is you fire your anvil into the air and the higher it goes, you get more points and then where it lands is important because the closer it lands to the base, the more points they get as well. The further away it is, they subtract points.

GD: Is the distance only a function of how level the base anvil is?

TB: The more level it is, the straighter it will go up. The idea is that the anvil goes straight up and straight down. So if it’s perfectly level, they’ll get that. However, they don’t want to hit the base anvil because those are hard to come by and if they damage it, it’s a big deal. What happens, if the top anvil isn’t balanced on the bottom anvil, it will start spinning when it gets launched and that spinning will eat up a lot of the energy that could be used for greater altitude. So, if it doesn’t spin, it will go higher, but if it’s spinning, it tends to lose energy. So there is science and engineering behind this ridiculous sport. Continue Reading “A Laugh-Filled Interview with Flying Anvils Host Tory Belleci” »

Break out your berets and black T-shirts: Summer break’s over for Jamie Hyneman, Adam Savage and the rest of the MythBusters.

According to The Discovery Channel, by the time the show’s 2010 run comes to an end in December,MythBusterswill have tested 756 myths, conducted 2,349 experiments, set off 746 explosions and destroyed 128 vehicles. (Seriously: How awesome would it be to be able to put those numbers on your résumé?)

This fall’s set opens this Wednesday, Oct. 6 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with”Hair of the Dog,” a sort-of-sequel to part of the 2007 episode “Dog Myths,” which tested methods of evading a bloodhound and getting past a guard dog. This time around, Adam and Jamie test even more drastic measures to throw the tracking canine off the scent. The supporting cast trio of Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci and newly-minted GeekMom contributor Kari Byron spend their part of the hour attempting to hide stuff from trained contraband-detecting dogs.

Considering there’s little of what I call the “Erector Set” factor — you know, where the MythBusters have to design and build some complex contraption in order to conduct their experiments — and not a single explosion, this was an awfully entertaining episode with more than a few head-shaking moments of wonder.

Discovery goes for a little cross-promotion with the Oct. 13 episode, “Storm Chasing Myths,” in which Storm ChasersReed Timmer and Sean Casey bring their modified tornado-pursuit cars in for some high-wind testing behind the jet engines of a 747. Then they challenge Jamie and Adam to develop nothing less than a portable tornado-proof shelter.